Linking Time! Also: I Will Bring Shame Upon My Family

This morning, I woke up full of dread and shame. Bleary and haggard, I stumbled toward my computer screen.

"No," I muttered. "I didn't do that. I would never do that. I must have dreamed it."

But I was wrong. There, before my eyes, was a pale-blue Safari window, glowing with menace.

"Holy fuck," I said. "I just wrote 3,000 words about Valley of the Dolls."

On that note: it's Linking Time! My most favorite time of all! (Note: this is a lie. My most favorite time is actually Smoking Time, but I am going to give that up - again - in approximately 48 hours. I will be in Ohio, so you won't have to witness my Neely O'Hara-like withdrawal unless you are a member of my immediate family. If you are, well, sucks to be you, I guess!) Here are some people who are much better at blogging than I am:

Man Madness is the single greatest use of the Internet, whether or not you live in DC. Which is manlier - the FBI or the CIA? Place your bets now!

Mainstreaming feminism: it turns out that's a problem! This is because it allows Sarah Palin to cuddle and/or cash in on the movement like it's an adorable Downsy baby. Also, things only get absorbed into the mainstream if they're not that threatening in the first place, so feminism is selectively mainstreamed? And the good stuff about the movement then becomes invisible? See also: sex-positive movement, relationship of Sex & the City to.

You guys, the military is sad and scary. (Have you read Our Guys yet? If not, do it. Warning: it is the only book that ever made me vomit. Aside from Atlas Shrugged, I mean.)

Other things that are sad and scary include: violence against sex workers. The Good Guys trial reports are fascinating. It's like watching a really good procedural, except that Amanda Hess actually writes about strip club workers like they're people, instead of Symbols of Decadence and/or body-count increasing devices. Revolutionary!

Oh, hey, sheep people!

I read Emily Gould's blog. This rambling, ambivalent, occasionally mean, often sad piece - which touches on Emma Goldman,* "Song for Sharon," Prop 8, love, solitude, and that damn Beyonce song - is a good example of why I do that.

Some other people, who are funny and smart, are complaining about the Beyonce song, because they think it's kind of regressive, what with the forcing men to marry you and give you presents for sex and whatnot. Personally, I feel that the song's main theme ("don't be mad when you see that he want it / if you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it") is simply another way of saying, "if you were really that invested in our relationship, perhaps you could have made that clear BEFORE WE BROKE UP AND I STARTED MAKING OUT WITH OTHER PEOPLE," which is a sentiment for the ages.

Now that I'm defending Beyonce, I must also tell you that I read a Bukowski poem that I liked! What has become of my standards, I ask you?

* However, I must respectfully point out that quoting the Goldman piece without qualifying it is objectively kind of bonkers. People do this a lot! Often in Women's Studies classes! Goldman made quite a few points in that piece, many of which were specific to her day and age. For example, she writes that marriage may come about because of love, whereas love does not come about because of marriage, a point which is no longer even vaguely controversial, and which is the precise reason that people tend to live together before getting hitched. She also argues against compulsory marriage, marriage as the goal of a woman's life, and prohibitions against sex outside of marriage - and all of these pressures still exist, but are considerably less powerful now, given the fact that all but the most conservative people resist or ignore them. Goldman also speaks out against marriage as an economic arrangement while completely undervaluing the presence of women in the workplace. If you have no income of your own, you might have to stay with someone who treats you badly out of sheer financial necessity; if you have a job, an income, and savings, however, then you get to stay for precisely as long as the marriage meets your needs. (Hopefully it lasts forever, but, you know, things happen.) At the time Goldman wrote this piece - when you were expected to marry someone without sleeping with him, living with him, or even knowing him very well, and were also encouraged to give up your entire career once the wedding had taken place - some of what she had to say was smart and relevant, if overblown; now, however, people tend to quote the piece as a support for their vague "marriage-is-bad" arguments, which rest mostly on the fact that their parents were fucked up or their exes were mean and they're consequently scared of commitment. This is quite another thing. Anyway, end of post derailment.

Places That Are Better Than My Apartment: An Ongoing Series

You know, it's not often that I feel nostalgic for the days before suffrage. Today, however, it occurs to me that, were I living in that day and age, I could at least have an apartment in Manhattan - namely, the Trowmart Inn.

According to Ephemeral New York (and this article, thanks for linking, guy) it was a "handsome hostelry" for ladies "of the class who [labor] for a small wage, and whose parents have no home within the city." Why, that's me! What sort of accomodations were provided for such ladies, pray tell?

For $4 a week, a girl could have a single room containing a bed, washstand, and table, plus breakfast and dinner.

You also got a library, a "good-sized laundry with porcelain tubs," access to a "medical woman" who worked on the first floor, and, as the Times points out, plumbing which was thoroughly "modern and scientific." In addition to this, there was no curfew, so you could gallivant around at all hours in a manner most unbecoming.

Furthermore, the building's owner, William Martin, was a man with a mission: to improve your love life through superior real estate.

"Girls who work long hours in factory, shop, and store, and whose leisure is spent within the dull confines of a cheap lodging or boarding house, have few opportunities for making and pursuing the acquaintance of desirable young men."

Yeah, tell me about it.

"Girls of gentleness and refinement do not care to be courted upon the open highway, nor in public parks, and thus the world is filling with spinsters, who, according to Mr. Martin, had they a proper place in which to entertain their admirers, would develop into happy, excellent wives."

Well, maybe. At the very least, they could develop into people who could say "come over to my place" without feeling the blush of housing-related shame.

There were apparently lots of lodging houses for working girls scattered throughout the city, but, as one letter to the Times points out, they had a significant problem: women who earned "too much" couldn't get rooms there, even if they couldn't really afford anything else.

"It has long been evident to those interested in the subject that girls earning from $7 to $9 per week were worse off than those who earn $5 or $6... Any one who has tried to find board from $4 to $5 knows from sad experience that the person who obtains it is to be congratulated. One may succeed if one goes far uptown or into the suburbs, but there carfare will bring it up to a higher figure."

Old-timey ladies: they're just like us! If by "us," you mostly mean "me!" And that is usually what I mean! Also, are you interested in hearing about economic and social disincentives for working women? Because this girl has some for you:

"It must be remembered that the more a girl earns the more she will have to spend on clothes. The clothes worn by the writer when she was earning $4.50 a week would not be suitable to wear in a first-class office, nor can she bring a luncheon and eat it in the office, as she did then. Her present salary is much larger than the former, yet she does not save much more in proportion, and she is not at all extravagant. This state of affairs often tends to crush ambition and make a girl regret an increase in her salary, since she must leave her comfortable quarters and probably in sheer desperation resort to doing her own cooking in a small furnished room. Dozens of girls ruin their health in this way, and almost starve in the effort to make 'both ends meet.'"

How much do I love this woman? Smart, ambitious, contrary, not above telling a Times writer what is what - I kind of want to build a time machine just so that I can hang out with her. Of course, she doesn't sign her name; she's just "A GIRL WHO WORKS."